Review procedure

All scientific monographs and textbooks are reviewed, without anonymisation of the process, by specialists in a given field who fulfil all of the following conditions:

• they pursue the academic discipline to which the book belongs,
• they are authors of up-to-date publications related as closely as possible to the subject of the book,
• they are affiliated to institutions other than those of the author (scientific editor),
• they are researchers with a post-doctoral degree.

A positive completion of the reviewing process shall be the condition for publication. The entire process shall be documented and such documentation shall be archived. The series of ‘The Didactic Materials' and informative and occasional publications shall be published without reviewing.

The reviewers shall be selected by the Editorial Committee on the basis of a list of at least three proposed reviewers and the subject of the submitted book. The Editorial Committee shall take the proposed names into consideration, but may select reviewer(s) from outside the list.

Books are reviewed by one person, with the exception of those meant as habilitation theses, which shall be referred to two reviewers. The condition of publication shall be obtaining one or two positive reviews, respectively. The names of reviewers shall be placed on the editorial page of the book (with their consent expressed in the contract), and reviews shall be customarily cited on the fourth page of the cover.

The reviewer's fee depends on the volume of the book. The contract with the reviewer shall include a deadline for submitting the review, usually not exceeding three months. The reviewer shall receive the book in paper and/or in electronic form.

We request the reviewer to present an informed, independent, objective and confidential opinion on the book submitted. What we need is a concise, yet in-depth, peer review with an unambiguous conclusion, as well as specific requests/suggestions for changes. To facilitate and standardise the reviewing process, we have produced the following forms:

• monograph review form
• edited book review form
• textbook review form

Each form ends with a conclusion (four available options):

1. The book is ready to publish in the form submitted.
2. The book is ready to publish on the condition that it has been corrected according to the reviewer's instructions.
3. The book is ready to publish on the condition that it has been corrected and that the new version has been approved by the reviewer.
4. A thoroughly corrected version of the book should be re-reviewed.
5. The book is not suitable for publication.

The reviews are forwarded to the authors along with the reviewer’s possible additional corrections and notes made in the form of comments in the electronic version of the manuscript or handwritten annotations on its printout.

In the case of receiving a positive or conditionally positive review (option 1 or 2 above), the author corrects his/her work using the ‘Track Changes’ function and sends it in electronic form to the publisher. The revised book should be accompanied by the author’s response to the review (in case of publications designed for the habilitation proceedings, two separate responses to the reviewers’ comments should be produced). If the reviewer has selected option 2 of the conclusions, he/she receives the materials for final approval. If he/she has selected option 1, he/she receives only the author’s response to his/her review. The entire documentation of the review process is discussed by the Editorial Committee, which will decide whether or not to accept the book for publication.

Once the Editorial Committee has accepted it for publication, the author shall submit the final version of the work to the Press. A publishing contract shall subsequently be signed with the author.

In case of negative editorial review(s), the author shall decide whether to continue or to withdraw from the publishing procedure. The declaration to continue the procedure shall mean that the author consents to thoroughly revise the work. Subsequently, the author shall revise the work in the change tracking mode and produce a response to the review. This material shall be subject to discussion by the Editorial Committee, which – on such basis – shall decide whether to refer the new version of the book for review.

Once the publication has been accepted by the Editorial Committee and editorial work has begun, the review shall be made available to the publishing editor.

We are constantly improving the reviewing procedure, following guidelines of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), and ‘The good practices in reviewing procedures in science’ (PL), produced by the Ministry of Science and Higher Education.